The first substantive chapter addresses the structural problem facing wine farmers at the Cape. Much like in France, there was a serious problem of overproduction of wines of indifferent quality leading to unstable prices. The chapter details the struggle between wine merchants and farmers, which led to the constitution of the Koöperatieve Wynbouwers Vereniging van Suid-Afrika (KWV) in 1918. It shows how the KWV successfully lobbied the Smuts government for devolved regulatory powers that enabled it to control the pricing for distilling wines from 1924. At the same time, the chapter shows that the market was constrained by low consumption amongst whites, including the Afrikaner wine farming community itself. This was compounded by the efforts of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and its allies in the South African Temperance Alliance (SATA) to pursue local option for whites and a form of temperance for the black population. The former failed, but the passage of the 1928 Liquor Act prevented the majority of the population from purchasing wine or brandy. Hence the victory of the KWV over the merchants was tempered by the legislative success of the temperance movement.

South Africa furnishes one of the most complex examples of the eclipse of Greater Britain, on account of the sheer diversity of peoples and political forces that shaped events in the post-war era. English South Africans experienced a period of prolonged disorientation as their paradigmatic status dwindled, caught between an Afrikaner majority determined to override their totems of British loyalty, and a burgeoning Black resistance calling time on the bogus liberties invested in the British Crown. In the decades after 1945, a uniquely opportune climate for humanitarian and anti-colonial claim-making was forged — not least for the empire’s First Peoples. All over the world, settler communities were confronted with insistent demands to redress the injustices flowing from the pioneering intrusions of their forebears, challenging their foundational myths and raising nagging questions about their security of tenure. For the minority of white, professedly ‘liberal’, English-speaking South Africans, bent on combatting Afrikaner political dominance, the advent of Indigenous demands rooted in universal rights would ultimately pose the more severe test to their British affinities and allegiances.

Australia entered the Second World War with considerable experience of coalition warfare, mainly based on the events of the First World War. Reflecting its recent history as a group of separate British colonies, by the First World War the new nation had not developed a foreign service and had little capacity for independent strategic decision-making. The Australian Government learned that its troops had landed at Gallipoli four days after the event; it had not even been advised, let alone consulted. By the last year of the war, however, the Australian Prime Minister was sitting in the Imperial War Cabinet, although this was not a permanent arrangement. Similarly, at the operational level, the formations of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) became part of the wider Empire’s military forces and were deployed and employed by British commanders, who rarely consulted the senior Australian commanders. But by the last year of the war senior Australian commanders had learned to scrutinise the plans of their British superiors. Coalition warfare is therefore essentially about strategy and command.

The political and economic struggle for control over South Africa between the British and the Boers erupted a second time in October 1899. A Boer offensive resulted in the sieges of Ladysmith, Kimberley, and Mafeking, threatening loyal British settlers and economic interests. Against his better judgment, General Buller divided his forces to satisfy immediate political and public interests. The result was the disastrous 'Black Week' of mid-December 1899, when all three British armies were stopped in their tracks at the Battles of Magersfontein, Stormberg, and Colenso. Supplies were readied, volunteers were recruited, and more divisions were mobilized. Over the next year, thanks to an overwhelming numerical advantage, the British regrouped and their advance succeeded in relieving the besieged towns and capturing and the Boer capitals. The Boer commandos in the field, however, refused to surrender and abandoning set-piece battles, they turned to guerrilla tactics. Lord Kitchener’s employment of a blockhouse system, a network of concentration camps, and scorched earth policy eventually broke Boer morale and their ability to continue the struggle. The South African War was Britain’s largest and most costly small war. Nearly half of a million British and Imperial troops fought; 22,000 never came home.

The South African War of 1899–1902 constituted a major political rupture. In the postwar period, science and technology consolidated the embryonic state and legitimated white authority – and racial segregation – by valorising rationality, order and progress. Members of scientific associations helped to build the university system which expanded rapidly after the First World War. The confluence of scientific and industrial expertise in Johannesburg was signalled by the establishment of a South African Institute for Medical Research in 1912. The national Department of Agriculture was a key employer of applied scientists, and veterinary researchers at Onderstepoort tackled a range of animal diseases. Innovative individuals such as Junod, Merensky and Marais advanced entomology, geology and zoology. Jan Smuts and J.H. Hofmeyr were committed to active participation in the emergent Commonwealth, viewing science as a means to transcend differences between English- and Afrikaans-speakers. In the 1920s and 30s both became strong advocates of the ‘South Africanisation’ of science and of research in the southern hemispheres. These included new theories of continental drift developed by Alexander du Toit, as well as remarkable paleontological discoveries indicating South Africa’s importance in the evolution of humankind.

Building on the Bryce Group’s post-war plan, the League of Nations Society was founded in 1915 to promote a peaceful organisation to the public. After the Society’s first public meeting in May 1917, the pro-league movement successfully evolved from a small circle to a mass movement that mobilised the public to establish a league. Previous studies have, therefore, regarded May 1917 as a positive turning point of the movement and mainly focused on widespread support for the league thereafter. Yet, the year 1917 also marked the time when the originators of the movement began to lose control of defining what the league would be like. To communicate to the general public, the Society simplified its ideas by underscoring only the creation of an international organisation without going into details. It led the movement to abandon its original, sophisticated discussions about a new order, which became accelerated in the following years.